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Civil unrest, bloody wars, poverty and famine, the continent of Africa has been plagued by devastating tragedies over the last several decades. Combined with political corruption, an unstable financial system, and lack of decent educational and business growth opportunities, its citizens are amongst the poorest in the world. Many living on less than one dollar per day.

Resulting in many fleeing the country for educational and career advancing opportunities.. According to the Humanosphere, an independent non-profit news organization, Africa loses $6 Billion every year in the brain drain.

I was 24 years old when I founded Saper Law Offices. From the outset, I had one hyper-focused mission: to build a niche practice representing creative entrepreneurs and innovative business organizations. Considering my age (and probably my gender), in order to attract clients, I established myself as an expert in areas of the law that had yet to be developed. I took on cases relating to “social media”, “cloud computing”, and “crowdsourcing” before those terms were well-known or in vogue.Read more »

Money laundering is obviously a hot topic surrounding bitcoin and other digital currencies. With the conviction of Ross Ulbricht, we know that law enforcement has taken a major interest in the area. Legitimate businesses need to be concerned with the possibility of money laundering, as it can present a major risk to the company, both civilly and criminally. A report was released by Europol this week citing digital currencies as an important component of their new model of organized crime.[1]

In the United States, marijuana still carries federal offenses despite being legalized in some states. Given that the traditional banking industry is regulated by the federal government, most banks have been slow to accept (and service) legal dispensary and related business activity, even if individuals or businesses are legitimate under state law and attempt to comply with all anti-money laundering/banking regulations.

In 2007 I was introduced to the Second Life virtual world while working at EON Reality Inc., a company that specializes in fully immersive Virtual Reality and 3D Stereoscopic turnkey solutions. One of my clients was a sponsor of the Corporate Pavilion at the Shanghai World Expo. I was asked to create a custom Virtual Reality experience using million dollar tech systems. It was then that I turned to virtual worlds to build the prototype in 3D for technical, audio/visual and design visualization.

In many ways, my path to bitcoin unknowingly started long before bitcoin existed. My early career focused on studying and working in marketing, with ancillary interests in both law and international trade. I decided to attend law school because I saw both small businesses as well as multinational corporations get lost in the quagmire of confusing and heavy regulatory schemes, and I wanted to help companies successfully navigate those waters.

Integrating Bitcoin is usually not that difficult to do, and for most US based businesses the need isn’t that great. If you’re just selling t-shirts to other Americans, PayPal works quite well. Bitcoin is better, but the biggest selling point at the moment is that accepting Bitcoin will get attention, and likely attract a bit of business from enthusiasts.

What gets me out of bed and in front of my computer every morning isn’t crypto-currency, but crypto-currency enabled markets.Read more »

Bitcoin was the first decentralized cryptocurrency that operate independently of any government or central bank. But the really interesting thing about Bitcoin is not the currency itself, rather than the underlying technology, the blockchain: a decentralized public ledger that relies on cryptography to ensure that every transaction is valid. As a secure and distributed datastore, the blockchain can be used for a variety of new applications, such an alternative domain name management system (Namecoin) or a cryptographically secure and decentralized public ledger (Blocksign). Most importantly, the blockchain allows for the creation of automated transactions or “smart contracts” between human and machines, or between multiple machines, which are automatically enforced by the underlying code of the technology. This, combined with the permanent storage capabilities of the blockchain, constitutes the basis on which to build new decentralized applications, such as decentralized and incentivized file-sharing (Metadisk) or distributed social networks (Gems, Twister, etc).